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Miles Gentry was the redheaded oldest son of John Simpson Gentry & Mildred Floyd - Gentry. He was born in Spartanburg District in the Walnut Grove community and educated, according to Mr J.B.O. Landrum, by Mr. Henry Patillo Barry at his noteworthy private boarding school in Switzer, Spartanburg District, SC, which is located between Walnut Grove and Reidville, two of the earliest white-settled areas of Spartanburg on the Tyger Rivers. (There were no public schools before the Civil War, so this meant Miles's parents were wealthier than the average and could afford to send him to a private...
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Miles Gentry was the redheaded oldest son of John Simpson Gentry & Mildred Floyd - Gentry. He was born in Spartanburg District in the Walnut Grove community and educated, according to Mr J.B.O. Landrum, by Mr. Henry Patillo Barry at his noteworthy private boarding school in Switzer, Spartanburg District, SC, which is located between Walnut Grove and Reidville, two of the earliest white-settled areas of Spartanburg on the Tyger Rivers. (There were no public schools before the Civil War, so this meant Miles's parents were wealthier than the average and could afford to send him to a private boarding school.) His father John Simpson Gentry was listed with land worth about $1000 on the 1850 population census, but on the Agricultural Census the same year he was listed with 500 acres valued at about $1500, 200 acres of which were "improved", plus another $100 in equipment. He also had two horses and a mule, 12 cows of which six were milking cows, 13 sheep and nine pigs. He was raising wheat and corn.
Miles started out working his parents' farm and later became a successful businessman who bought & sold many pieces of property in and around Spartanburg, SC. Miles was twice elected the Sheriff of Spartanburg District, the first time when he was 33 yrs of age. (He also had a brother who was a sheriff's deputy.)
(All SC areas were called 'district' before the early 1900's when it was officially changed to 'county', but the two words were often used interchangeably by South Carolinians at the time.)
Miles is on the 1850 census with his parents as age 23, but he's also listed as a farmer who had the following agricultural assets on his family's farm:
MILES GENTRY - Agriculture - Page 657 Line 41 - Acres: 0-0-0 & $10 Implements--1horse, 1milch cow, 1other cow, 2swine = $95 livestock --10buWheat, 100buCorn, 2balesCotton, 10buPeas, 4buIrishPot, 40buSwtPot -100lbsButter -$10Homemade goods, $20_Total Farm Assets
By 1860, Miles was listed as the Sheriff, boarding with his brother Elias who was married and working under him as Deputy Sheriff living on the north side of town next to John B Cleveland, the wealthiest man in the district.
Landon Miles Gentry was first elected the Sheriff of Spartanburg District on 23 Sep 1859 and was the Sheriff throughout the Civil War, and he also served a 2nd term as Sheriff after Reconstruction in 1876 - 1883. The Spartan newspaper says he was elected in 1859 with an excess of 603 votes over J B Tolleson. (I suspect he was forbidden from running again in 1868 because he had been a Captain in the Confederate military and all former confederate officers after the Civil War were forbidden from holding public office during Reconstruction by the northerners who realized putting the same whites back in office would allow them to prevent blacks from taking part in politics. But after 10+ yrs of trying to change white southern culture to accept and educate blacks as equals, northerners gave up and went home and Miles ran again and won in 1876.)
Sometime in the 1850's - 1870's, Miles bought & lived on land at the edge of town on what is now N. Church St. but was then called just Church St close to where the Asheville Hwy now starts, his house was not far beyond Wofford College across from the Evans-Bivings home & before you get to the John B Cleveland home named Bon Haven on the corner of N Church and Asheville Hwy (which was demolished in 2020). I was told by my great-aunt that Fremont School was later built on Miles's property on the corner of Pearl St and Magnolia St.across from the fire station on Pearl St His neighborhood at the time was on the northern suburb of the city & was one of the wealthiest in a growing town. Aunt Mella gave me a photo of him standing in front of his house which she said faced Church St on the west side sitting close to the road, it shows a white 2-story wood-sided home with a full front porch & railing typical of the era and a white picket fence at the front next to the sidewalk. It was not a grand or lavish home in the style of the Cleveland or Evans homes nearby but it would've been comfortable and big enough for a growing family and suitable for a Sheriff.
Miles was one of the top officials of the city, as evidenced by his being one of a delegation the family says met with a northern representative near the end of the Civil War to work out the details of surrender. (I have read that General Sherman secretly sent representatives to different areas of the South to see who was defiant and who would make deals to come back peacefully into the Union, he then attacked and looted and burned the areas who refused to surrender. Since Sherman did not attack and burn Spartanburg, I am thinking the leaders here made a deal to lay down their arms peacefully, but so far I have seen no record of who this northern representative was, it seems to have been done under-the-table.)
After the war, men who had been prominent Confederates during the war were forbidden from re-entering politics during Reconstruction, I found several newspaper articles in Dec 1868 where Miles and others petitioned the state government for "removal of their political disabilities." A state bill was entered in March 1870 to do this. Miles also petitioned the state legislature in 1868 to pay him for services during the war as Sheriff, he was evidently not paid until 1885, after Reconstruction was over and the southern whites had regained total control of the local government.
In Jan 1869, Miles was the subject of an investigation by the state into "dieting" prisoners in his jail who were standing trial for murder. I didn't find a statement of verdict, but during this time period Miles also made several trips to Columbia. On at least one trip he took his whole family. (I am sure his beautiful wife and her brood of children were an asset to his image.)
In Sept 1871, Miles and other notable men of the District wrote a letter to Senator John Scott who was in charge of the state Committee investigating the activities of the new KKK organization. The racial violence in the Upstate and especially in Spartanburg had become so egregious that the Committee decided to declare martial law singling out Spartanburg by name and a handful of other counties, the letter Miles and other locals signed to Sen. Scott stated that martial law was not needed here because Spartanburg was "in a state of profound peace and quiet." But martial law was declared & the KKK was outlawed. It did not stop the violence, it causes the KKK to go underground while the men formed other public organizations ostensibly for religious or social purposes, albeit with guns. The white men used violence and deceit to get back their former positions.)
(My aunt showed me a transcript of a certified statement her cousin Julian had in his possession stating that his grandfather and uncles had participated in vote rigging after the war. The whites picked up a wagon full of compliant Negro men they plied with copious bottles of whiskey and drove them all over the county on election day to vote multiple times in different precincts for pro-white candidates.)
By 1880, Miles had returned to his former job as Sheriff and had bought land and built a home and was a notable of the city. Many southern white men were financially devastated after the war, I have read that southern GDP had declined by 60% in 1870 and it took those who did recover many years. But Miles seems to have weathered the war very well financially. (Miles was missed on the 1870 census, I'm not sure why, perhaps he was in a transition period.)
Miles's Church St. property in June 1880 consisted of a working farm of about 350 acres he said was worth $5000, described as the following in the June 1880 census:
Owner - Not renting for money or shares - 9? tilled acres, 5 acres permanent pastures/orchards, 26 acres Woodland, 233 "Other" acres = $5000 value; also $190 machinery, $400 Livestock. Miles paid out $20 for repairs, $25 for fertilizer, & $50 for labor for 6 wks of the last year for six females. Miles said his "estimated value for farm productions the previous year" was $150.
His tilled acreage consisted of: Grass Lands Mown: 5, producing 2 tons hay & 2 bushels grass seed. Miles owned 4 horses & 1 ass/mule. Miles's farm grew 6 acres of wheat for 120 bushels total; he also sold 50 cords of wood worth $100. Miles had 4 swine & 12 poultry producing 240 dozen eggs in 1879. Miles also had 2 "milch" cows & 3 "other" cows; he "dropped" 2 calves & slaughtered 4 cows, & produced 37 gallons of either milk or butter the previous year.
Miles also had a brickmaking business in 1880 that was not on his home property, he said he invested $350 to create a business employing 8 males, 0 females & 2 children between May & November, with 8 employees from November to May. He said he paid them $11.25 for skilled labor & $10.50 for unskilled labor, total cost to him of $700 the previous year. They were operating full-time for 6 mos of the year and made 500 bricks worth $2000. His cost for materials was $550. In summary, he paid about $1250/yr to earn $2000, a profit of $750/yr from his brickmaking business, which he said was located on "Simpson Lawson's Fork".
Miles had at least nine children by his first wife, Julia Anna Camp, who was the daughter of Saul Abisha Camp and Harriet Caroline Surratt. Saul Camp was a wealthy merchant and Mason in the Limestone area of what later became Cherokee County but was at this time part of Spartanburg District. Julia was only 15 when they met and Miles became smitten with her raven-haired beauty, her parents refused to let him court her at first because she was so young and he was over twice her age at about 34 yrs old, but the sheriff kept returning and they finally gave in. She was 16 when they married and family lore says their marriage was the social event of the season. They had the following children;
Gentry 1862 – 186_
Harriet Caroline "Hattie" Gentry - Harris 1864 – 1939
John Joseph "JJ" Gentry Sr., Magistrate Judge 1866 – 1946
Mildred Elizabeth Gentry - Anderson 1868 – 1929
Landon Miles Gentry Jr. 1871 – 1878
Saul Camp Gentry 1876 – 1932
Maj. Charles Wofford Gentry, MD 1877 – 1956
Eva Gentry - Berry 1879 – 1970
Gentry 1884 - 1884
Miles's 1st wife Julia Camp died following a difficult childbirth in 1884, then in 1885 he lost his namesake son Landon Miles Jr to a wagon accident (the black man was charged with assault).
Miles married Mrs. Julia A Cloy - Riser about the year 1887 based on the 1900 census, she was the widowed or divorced daughter of a Lutheran minister and former keeper of a boarding house in Aiken, SC, she died in 1903 & is also buried next to Miles. Julia Riser had at least 2 sons by a previous relationship but no children by Miles. Miles sent all his children to college; his oldest son John Joseph "J.J." Gentry was a graduate of Harvard and became a local Magistrate Judge, and son Charles became a physician who settled in Greenville, SC.
The Gentry's were in the top tiers of Spartanburg society, and Miles had been accumulating a quite large portfolio of real estate properties in and around the city of Spartanburg while Sheriff. Miles attended First Baptist on Main St which J.B.O. Landrum in his 1900 history of Spartanburg called simply "the Baptist church". Miles was wealthy and news articles show he was one of the notables of the city in his day, so by leaving him out of his 2nd history of Spartanburg, Mr. J.B.O. Landrum is showing he did not consider him a Christian man. I say this because when Landrum wrote his "History of Spartanburg County" published in 1900, he consistently & explicitly lauded each man he profiled as being very notable examples of Christian men and he did not include a bio of Miles & only mentioned him twice: once in relation to the excellent education he received at the noteworthy school of Henry Patillo Barry in Switzer, and once more as the father of the wife of J Weste Harris, whose family he did profile and lauded as Christian. Miles was not the only notable of Spartanburg left out by Landrum, I was told by a fellow genealogist of at least one more. (Landrum said the local Harris family progenitor, Col Wm W Harris, was a "lifelong friend of his pastor. Rev. John G. Landrum" of First Baptist and was therefore someone J.B.O. Landrum would have had detailed knowledge of as a close family friend. As a relative of the famous pastor Rev John G Landrum and a lifelong Spartanburg resident and member of the local upper class himself, J.B.O. Landrum had intimate first or second-hand knowledge of every prominent person in town, including unpublished scandals.)
This is one example of why I think Landrum disapproved of Miles. According to Miles's granddaughter Mella Harris, during his wife's last childbirth in 1884, Miles hired an alcoholic doctor to attend his wife's 9th birth at home, when she had difficulties the doctor tried to operate on her on the kitchen table while drunk. Julia died. They later found multiple liquor bottles thrown outside the kitchen window where the doctor had tried to hide them. Drunkenness then was considered a sin, a weakness of character, it was not recognized as a drug addiction, and of course churches preached against the evil of "the demon rum". Miles's hiring such a doctor instead of getting a more worthy sober man led to his popular and beautiful wife's untimely death. It especially would've turned many of the town's influential women against him, and despite women of this time not being allowed to have public offices and jobs, they did have great clout in the home, the community and especially in the church, the social life of the town turned on what the women thought.
It is noteworthy that one of Miles's younger sons Saul became addicted to alcohol, he left his wife & children and worked on the railroad for many years traveling and living away from his family. Miles's oldest daughter Hattie joined the Women's Temperance League and refused to condone liquor in her home, no doubt because of firsthand knowledge of what it could do. And Miles's 2nd wife Julia Cloy - Rizer - Gentry was said in her 1903 obituary to be a prominent local leader of the Women's Temperance League, she had instituted a new policy of taking Thanksgiving and Christmas meals to the incarcerated at the jail where they could witness to the sinners and alcoholics and try to turn them from their destructive ways. (At this time, there was no Alcoholic's Anonymous or professional treatment programs for drug addicts, women formed the League in the late 1800's in a desperate attempt to halt the damage addiction to alcohol was causing to their families.)
Miles evidently expected his children to be as ambitious as he was, he was said to have originally disapproved of his eldest daughter's marriage to John Weste Harris according to J.B.O. Landrum in his 1900 history of Spartanburg's notable families, on the grounds that her future husband was not rich enough or ambitious enough, in fact Weste was a penniless son of a former farmer in Golightly, SC who died in 1875 but not before he lost his land after the war due to the loss of their slaves & the post-war exorbitant taxes imposed by the northern reconstructionists. It is ironic that Miles died in the home of his daughter Hattie Gentry-Harris near the Southern Shops Railway repair yards north of Spartanburg on what is now industrial land but was at that time a working farm given to his oldest daughter Hattie by her father as her dowry and in a house built by the man he didn't want his daughter to marry.
Miles is buried in the prestigious West Oakwood section of Oakwood Cemetery near Converse College. His namesake grandson and Hattie's second oldest child who died in childhood is also buried in his large plot. His daughter Hattie obtained a number of his numerous land tracts in and around Spartanburg and rented out the houses on them for years after his death, their income became the means by which Hattie, who was an excellent money manager like her father, sent her own children to college.
--Jeni
Revised 5/7/2022 |
